I have various devices around the house, and some are BBSB, some LWRF and some cheap Chinese relays. I use a windows server PC and run scripts to send UDP packets to a LWRF controller and a BBSB online controller (two in fact). I also have scatterings of remote controls that obviously interface with the receivers directly.

What I want to do is get my server to respond to a LWRF remote control signal, or, indeed a BBSB remote signal, so I can control any device or devices from my scripts, and trigger the scripts from my remote.

I’m reasonably technical, but not sure I could build this up from scratch, so has anyone actually done this or similar, so I can ‘borrow’ your ideas?

The easy, but expensive, way is to add a usb 433MHz transceiver like RFXCOM RFXtrx433E , It can receive and transmit data to a large range of 433MHz devices including lightwaverf. It is often used with a home server like domoticz but there is an api so you can integrate it into your own software.

The difficult, but cheap, way is to use a raw 433MHz receiver and interface it to the PC. This is made more difficult as interfacing to a WIndows PC is more difficullt than say a Raspberry Pi or ESP8266 module.

An ESP module like a NodeMCU could be combined with a 433MHz receiver and lightwaverf libraries to send wifi messages to the PC server based on the lightwaverf messages received. A nice feature of this is that several could be spread around a larger area to ensure the messages are picked up well.

Personally I have gone down the second route as I am comfortable working with ESP8266 modules and it means everything is under my control. In my case the messages are being sent to a Raspberry Pi server as I am more comfortable having that on 24/7.

I was wondering about using a RPi as an interface, mainly as I have a ‘spare’ one on my bench, but my coding didn’t get past fortran, so I think I may get lost on that journey!

The RXCOM unit is a lot of money, but I’ve already bought the LWRF controller and two BBSB controller over the years, and as my house is split into two halves, I’ll eventually need another controller, and the RXCOM should be able to substitute for either…

If I’m not missing an easy and cheap solution, I may well go for the easy but expensive option, though reading up on ESP8266 modules does start giving me ideas about IOT… but that is maybe a future project.